Christianity and the Decline of the Roman Empire.

* This essay first appeared as the introduction A. Momigliano, ed.,
The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century,
The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1)

I may perhaps begin with a piece of good news.
In this year 1959 it can still be considered an historical truth
that the Roman empire declined and fell. Nobody is as yet prepared
to deny that the Roman empire has disappeared. But here historians
begin to disagree. When we ask them to tell us when the Roman empire
disappeared, we collect an embarrissing variety of answers. The more
so because there is a tendency to identify the beginnings of the
Middle Ages with the end of the Roman empire: a tendency which would
have given no little surprise to medieval men who firmly believed in
the continuity of the Roman empire.

There are, of course, historians who see the Middle Ages making their
appearance and the Roman empire sinking into oblivion with the
conversion of Constantine in 312 or with the inauguration of
Constantinople in 330. And there are historians who would delay
the end of the ROman empire to that year 1806 - more precisely
to that day 6 August 1806 - in which Napolean I compelled the
Austrian emperor Francis II to underwrite the end of the Holy
Roman empire. Between these two extreme dates there are plenty
of intermediate choices.

There are still traditionalists ready to support the once famous date
of september 476, when Romulus Augustulus lost his throne; and
there are more sophisticated researchers who would prefer the death
ofJustinian in 565 or the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 - when the
Roman empire was in a way replaced by two Roman empires. Another
favourite date is the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as the end of the
new Rome. Uninhibited by such a variety of opinions, Professor
Arnold Toynbee has succeeded in adding one which at first sight seems
to be of remarkable originality. He has reproached Gibbon for not
understanding that the Roman empire began to decline four centuries
before it was born. Indeed, Professor Toynbee maintains that the crisis
of Roman civilization started in the year 431 B.C. when the Athenians
and the Spartans came to grief in the Peloponnesian War. [1]

But this opinion is really not original: it is in fact curiously reminiscent
of an old Marxist point of view. Until recently Marxist historians have
held that the crisis of classical civilization started with the Peloponnesian
War or at the latest with the Gracchan movement. Only later have Russian
historians begun to realize that their position verged on absurdity.

It is tempting to laugh at this game of finding a date for the end of the
Roman empire, especially when the date is four centuries before the
beginning of the Roman empire. But it is obvious that the game is after
all not so futile as it looks. A date is only a symbol. Behind the question
of dates there is the question of the continuity of European history.
Can we notice a break in the development of the social and intellectual
history of Europe? If we can notice it, where can we place it?

Historians, theologians, and political theorists have meditated on the
decline and fall of Rome for centuries. Toynbee might defend himself
by saying that the ancients pondered about the decline of Rome before
Rome gave any clear sign of declining. They reflected on the causes of
the fall of Rome even before Rome fell in any sense.

Professor Mircea Eliade rightly observed that the Romans were
continuously obsessed by the "end of Rome"'. [2] The problem of the
decadence of Rome was already formulated by Polybius in the second
century B.C. The idea that Rome was getting old is clearly expressed in
Florus, an historian of the second century A.D. [3] After the sack of
Rome by Alaric in 410 the decline of Rome became the subject of the
most famous of all philosophic meditations on history - St. Augustine's
Civita dei. The Roman empire continued to survive, but people knew
that something had happened. They spoke of translatio imperii - of the
transition from the old Roman empire to the new Holy Roman empire
of Charlemagne and other German emperors. Nobody doubted that
the continuity of the Roman empire concealed a change. Indeed, about
A.D 1000 Otto III dreamt of reviving the old Roman empire: he spoke of
renovatio imperii Romanorum. But the greatest of the Latin poets of the
eleventh century, Hildebert of Lavaardin, was under no illusion about the
state of Rome: 'Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina.' [1]

The thought of reviving old Rome, old classical civilization, became the
inspiration of the humanistic movement in Italy in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. This implied the awareness that the Christian civilization
of earlier centuries was something profoundly different from the classical
world of Rome. Let us remind ourselves - because this is essential - that our
problem of the decline of Rome is a product of italian humanism. In that
atmosphere Flavio Biondo wrote his history of Italy 'ab inclinatione
Romanorum imperii' towards the middle of the fifteenth century. He dated
the decline of Rome from the sack of Rome in 410. The Goths, the barbarians,
started the decline of Rome.

Since Flavio Biondo each generation has produced its own theory or theories
on the decline and fal of Rome. [2] Gibbon was heir to a long tradition of
thought on the subject. Until the end of the eighteenth century few responsbile
historians followed Biondo in attributing the decline of Rome to the German
invasions. Rather, causes of the decline were sought inside the empire.
Machiavelli and Paruta in the sixteenth century tried to discover the cause
of the decline of Rome in its constitution. In the early eighteenth century,
more exactly in 1734, Montesquieu published his Considerations sur la grandeur et la decadence des Romains.

By subtle analysis Montesquieu showed two of the main reasons for the
fall of ancient Rome. There is an anti-Christian note in Montesquieu which
becomes loud in Voltaire and loudest of all in Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Gibbon
focused attention on Christianity as the main factor of change and, as he
throught, of decadence in the structure of the Roman empire. It was not until
the nineteenth century that the German invasions came to be generally
regarded as the key to understanding of end of old Rome.

During the nineteenth century nationalism prevailed, and historical research
was mainly in German hands; it is not surprising that German scholars should
believe that the German invasions sufficed to explain the birth of the Middle Ages.
The most coherent alternative view was elaborated by Marx and his followers
when they claimed that the Roman empire fell because its social structure,
founded as it was upon slavery, was replaced by the feudal economic system.

In more recent years the picture has become more complex. The enormous
vitality of the Byzantine empire has been recognized, and it has been shown
that much of its political and cultural tradition is of Greek or Roman origin.
While older Byzantine scholars like Professor Charles Diehl stressed the
oriental character of Byzantine civilization, a more modern school of thought
has maintained, in Professor Bayne's words, that the Byzantine empire was
the result of the fusion of the Hellenistic with the Roman tradition. [1]

There is also an increasing realization of the part played by Islam in the social
changes of the Mediterranean world during and after the seventh century.
Other scholars like the Hungarian Professor A. Alfoldi and the German
Professor F. Altheim invite us to look beyond the borders of the empire at the
nomadic tribes of non-German origins - Sarmatians, Huns, Slavs - who directly
or indirectly contributed to changing the ways of life of Europe after the
third century A.D.

As I have said, even the Marxists are no longer able to defend their tenet
that the crisis of ancient civilization started at the end of the fifth century B.C.
Recent discussions in the leading periodical of the Russian historians, the Vestnik
Drevnej Istorii, show that they have been shifting their positions. A book
published in 1957 by a very intelligent historian, Mme E. M. Staerman, denies
that there was a clear-cut struggle between slaves and slave-owners. She
emphasizes the variety of social forms to be found in the Roman empire, and
the need of avoiding generalizations. [2]

But the most important discussion on the topic of social changes in the
Roman empire remains that which developed in the last forty years between
the followers of the Belgian scholar H. Pirenne and the followers of the
Austrian A. Dopsch. [1] As we all know, Dopsch substantially claimed that no
break in continuity is noticeable in the Western world as a consequence of the
German invasions. There was considerable redistribution of land, but the legal
forms of ownership remained essentially Roman, city life survived, there was
no return to natural economy, no interruption of the great trade-routes, and
no interruption on the transmission of cultural goods.

Pirenne accepted Dopsch's view that the German invasion did not put an end
to the Graeco-Roman social structure, but contended that the ancient ways of
life were disrupted by the Arabs: they played the part that more conventional
historans used to attribute to the Germans. In Pirenne's opinion the Arabs
destroyed the unity of Mediterranean, paralysed the trade between East and
West, drained the gold away from the West, and displaced the centre of
civilized life from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. The West, having
been cut off from Byzantium, had to look after itself. The coronation of
Charlemagne was symbolically the answer given by the West to the challenge
of Mohammed's followers. Thence the somewhat unexpected title of Pirenne's
great book, Mohammed et Charlemagne.

It is perhaps right to say that Rostovtzeff was in essential agreement with
Pirennce against Dopsch. Of course, he found the cause of the decline of the
cities not in the intervention of Arabs, but in the revolution of the peasantry
against the city-dwellers. But Rostovtzeff, like Pirenne, was a bourgeois in
the classical sense: he identified civilization with city life and saw the end
of the classical world in the decline of the cities.

Now it is clear that all this recent research is unified by a common interest
in the structural changes of the social organization of the Roman empire.
It is also undeniable that researchers are less and less prepared to maintain
that a simple formula can cover the enormous variety of local situations
within the Roman empire. We are learning to respect regional differences
as much as chronological sequences. We begin to see that what is true of
France in the fourth century is not necessarily true of Spain, Africa, or
Italy, not to speak of Syria or Egypt.

But even regional studies cannot overcome what seems to me the most
serious objection against both Pirenne and Dopsch, and, indeed, against
Rostovtzeff. The objection is that these historians talked of social changes
without even discussing the most important of all social changes - The rise of
Christianity. More generally, it can be said that no interpretation of the decline
of the Roman empire can be declared satisfactory it it does not also account
for the triumph of Christianity.

It may seem ridiculous to have to emphasize this proposition so many years
after A. Harnack and E. Troeltsch. But a careful study of their works can perhaps
explain why they failed to impress their fellow historians. Though both Harnack
and Troeltsch were well aware that the Church was a society competing with
the society of the Roman empire, they remained theologians to the end. They
were more interested in the idea of Christianity than in Christians. Rostovtzeff
and Pirenne, who loved the cities of men, may be excused if they remained
unimpressed by theologians who talked or seemed to talk about the idea
of the city of God.

It is the modest purpose of this paper to reassert the view that there is a
direct relation between the triumph of Christianity and the decline of the
Roman empire. But, of course, it will not be a simple return to Gibbon. What
Gibbon saw as a merely destructive power must be understood on its own terms
of Civitas dei - a new comonwealth of men for men.

Christianity produced a new style of life, created new loyalties, gave people new
ambitions and new satisfactions. So far nobody has written a realistic evaluation
of the impact of Christianity on the structure of pagan society. I shall not attempt
such a task here. I shall confine myself to a few elementary remarks on the impact
of Christianity on political life between the fourth and the sixth centuries A.D.
We all know the basic facts. [1]

In the third century the Roman empire had faced disintegration. It survived
thanks to the strenuous efforts at reconstruction which are connected with the
names of Claudius Gothicus, Diocletian, and Constantine. The result was an
organization founded upon compulsion. For reasons which have not yet been
entirely explained, money economy collapsed in the third century: there were
moments in which barter and taxation in kind seemed destined to replace money
transactions in the the empire.

This crisis was overcome. Constantine introduced gold coins, the solidi, which
remained the standard for about 800 years and served as an ultimate basis both
for the fiscal system and private transactions. But there was a debased currency
for everyday use, and the fluctuations in the rates of exchange between gold and
debased currency were a source of uncertainty and an excuse for extortions.

The middle class emerged from the crisis demoralized and imporverished.
Civil servants and soldiers were paid less in the fourth century than in the third.
They came to rely on fees and bribery to supplement their salaries. Whatever
the explanation may be, there developed also a shortage of manpower, while
ordinary activities were made more burdensome by excessive taxation and the
general unpleasantness of life. Barbarian invasions and civil wars must have
destoryed a great deal of wealth. People tended to drift away from their work;
and the government answered by bindng the peasant to the land, making
compulsory and hereditary certain activities and transforming the city councils
into compulsory and hereditary corporations responsible for the collection of taxes.

The army needed men. About 500,000 men seem to have required by the army,
and there were not enough volunteers to make up this number. Recruitment
was no easy matter. Landed proprietors had to supply recruits from among
their serfs or at least had to compound by paying money. The son of a soldier
was bound, at least under certain circumstances, to follow his father's profession
But the best soldiers were recruited among the barbarians, mainly Germans and
Sarmatians, who were settled within the empire either individually or in communities.

The army was therefore organized on uneconomic lines. It was made even more
uneconomic by the division between frontier army and central army. The frontiers
were guarded by soldiers who were less well paid and less respected than their
colleagues of the mobile force at the centre.

To pay such an army a prosperous empire was needed. The empire was not
prosperous, and there are reasons to believe that insecurity and inflation
curtailed traffic. We have not enough evidence about the volume of trade
circulating in the Roman empire at any given moment. We are therefore in no
position to state in figures that there was less trade in the fourth century
than, for instance, in the second century.

But we can infer from the decline of the bourgeoisie in the fourth century
and from the exclusive importance of great landowners that properous traders
were few. One has the impression that long-distance trade was increasingly
in the hands of small minorities of Syrians and Jews.

Two capitals having replaced one, there were more unproductive expenses
than before. Constantinople, the new Rome, grew up a marvel to see.
But, as in the older Rome, the citizens of Constantinople enjoyed the
privilege of a free supply of bread - the corn being provied by Egypt.

Preachers in their sermons painted in violent colours the contrast between
wealth and poverty, and invariably intimated that wealth was the root of
oppression. St. Ambrose in the West and St. John Chrysostom in the East
attacked the rich who bought house after house and field after field,
throwing out the former owners. What they say seems to be confirmed
by the few data we have about individual estates in the fourth and fifth
centuries. Some families had princely possessions spread over several
provinces of the empire. They lived more and more, though not yet exclusively, in the country, and their estates were self-sufficient units.

The wealthiest landowners were members of the sentatorial class. Here
again, the change from the third century is evident and important. In the
third century the class of the senators was definitely declining. The
senators were deprived of the command of the armies and to a certain
extent of the provincial government. The conditions of the fourth century did not allow the senators to recover control of the army: professional
soldiers, most frequently of German origin, took over.

But the senatorial class absorbed their formal rivals, the knights, and
developed into a powerful clique of great landowners who, especially in
the West, monopolized what was left of civilized life outside the Church
and played an increasing part in the Church itself. Senators and great
landowners became almost synonymous terms. These people knew the
comforts and amenities of life; they cultivated rhetoric and poetry.
In Rome, under the guidance of Symmachus, they provided the last
bastion of paganism. Elsewhere they turned to the Church.

The fact that the aristocracy played a role of increasing importance
in the affairs of the Church is only one aspect of what is perhaps the
central feature of the fourth century: the emergence of the Church as
an organization completing with the State itself and becoming attractive
to educated and influential persons.

The State, though trying to regiment everything, was not able to prevent
or suppress the competition of the Church. A man could in fact escape
from the authority of the State if he embraced the Church. If he liked power
he would soon discover that there was more power to be found in the
Church than in the State.

The Church attracted the most creative minds - St. Ambrose, St. Jerome,
Hilarius of Poitiers, St. Augustine in the West; Athanasius, John Chrysostom,
Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Caesarea in the East: almost all born rulers,
rulers of a type which, with exception of the scholarly emperor Julian, it was
hard to find on the imperial throne. They combined Christian theology with
pagan philosophy, worldly political abilities with a secure faith in immortal
values. They could tell both the learned and the unlearned how they
should behave, and consequently transformed both the external features
and the inner meaning of the daily existence of an increasing number of people.

Gibbon was simplifying a very complicated issue when he insinuated that
Christianity was responsible for the fall of the empire, But he perceived that
the church attracted many men who in the past would have become excellent
generals, governors of provinces, advisers to the emperors.

Moreover, the Church made ordinary people proud, not of their old political
institutions, but of their new churches, monasteries, ecclesiatical charities.
Money which would have gone to the building of a theatre or of an aqueduct
now went ot the building of churches and monasteries. The social equilibrium
changed - to the advantage of the spiritual and physical conditions of monks
and priests, but to the disadvantage of the ancient institutions of the empire.

The expanding and consolidating hierachical organization of the Church
offered scope for initiative, leadership, ambition. With Theodosius' law of
A.D. 392 pagan cults became illegal. Other laws were directed against heretics.
Catholic priests obtained all sorts of privileges, including that of being judged
by their own bishops in the case of criminal offences. This was the outcome of
a century of struggles. St. Ambrose, having the whole wieght of his pwoerful
and fearless personality into the struggle, compelled the aging Theodosius
to yield to the demands of the Church. St. Ambrose's victory can be considered
final in so far as paganism was concerned.

When Alaric captured Rome in 410 many people asked themselves whether
the ruin of Rome was not the sign that Christianity was bad for the empire.
The Christian answer to these doubts prevailed. It opened a new epoch
in the philosophy of history. The political disaster was real enough, but more
real was the faith which inwardly transformed the lives of the multitudes
and which was now given its intellectual justification by St. Augustine in his
City of God.

If paganism was dying, this did not mean that the unity of the Church, willed
by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and accepted by Theodosius, was entirely
safe. The great episcopal churches of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, and
Alexandria were manoeuvring against each other. Nobody seriously
challenged the hegemony of Rome in the West (perhaps because the claims
of the Roman bishops were still vague), but even in Rome we meet rival
bishops fighting each other with the support of excited crowds. And there
were heresies. If Arianism was a lost cause inside the Empire, it prospered
among the barbarians pressing on its bordres. Other heresies, such as
Priscillianism in Spain and Donatism in Africa, kept their appeal for a long time.

Much can be said about the internal conflicts, the worldly ambitions, the
intolerance of the Church. Yet the conclusion remains that while the political
organization of the empire became increasingly rigid, unimaginative, and
unsuccessful, the Church was mobile and resilient and provided space for
those whom the State was unable to absorb. The bishops were the centres
of large voluntary organizations. They founded and controlled charitable
institutions. They defended their flocks against the state officials. When
the military situation of the empire grew worse, they often organized armed
resistance against the barbarians. It seems to me impossible to deny that
the prosperity of the Church was both a consequence and a cause of the
decline of the state.

People escaped from the state into the Church and weakened that state
by giving their best to the Church. This is a situation which in its turn
requires analysis and explanation. But its primary importance cannot be
overlooked. The best men were working for the Church, not for the state.

Monasticism provides the most telling test of the capacities of the
Church in the fourth century. [1] The first hermits of the third century
were Christians who in order to live a perfect Christian life abandoned
both the pagan world and the Christian communities and retired to the
desert. This was no simple revolt against society. It was born out of a
deep experience of struggle against the temptations of the flesh. Where
there is a hermit, there is the devil. The devil was a powerful reality in late
antiquity, and the hermit was both obsessed by the devil and determined
to fight him. The devil pursued the hermit, but the hermit believed he had
the right weapons to counter-attack.

St. Anthony was the model hermit, and his biography written by St. Athanasius
became the model for all lives of saints, one of the most influential books
of any time. But the hermits were a clear menace to orderly Christian society.
Each of them organized his life on his own lines, defying the authority of the
bishops and claiming to be the embodiment of the perfect Christian. While
official Christianity was not bent on organizing the world and on achieveing
a working compromise with worldy ambitions, the hermits expressed contempt
for the world.

On the other hand, as Athanasius himself recognized when he chose to write
the life of St. Anthony, the hermits were the true representatives of Christian
asceticism. They could not be eliminated. A solution of the dilemma was found
in creating monastic orders where collective life according to strictly ascetic
rules replaced the hermit's individual escape from this world. First Pachomius,
then Basil laid down the rules for the monasteries they founded and controlled.
St. Basil's Rule inspires Eastern monastic rules even today.

Monasticism was introduced to the West in the second part of the fourth
century. St. Jerome was the popularizer of the Eastern monastic ideals and
found disciples amdong the most aristocratic ladies of Rome. Later
St. Augustine dictated rules for people inclining to monastic life both in his
Regula ad servos dei (the authenticity of which is disputed) and in his ascetic
treatises, such as De opere Monachorum and De sancta Virginitate.
So did his contemporary John Cassian in France. All these rules provided
approved patterns of life and introduced manual work as a normal part of
the monk's day. They also established direct or indirect control by the
ecclesiastical authorities over the monasteries. This is not to say that
the sting was entirely taken out of monastic life.

The monks, especially in the East, proved often to be unruly, rebellious,
disturbingly fanatical, and ignorant. Much social discontent contributed
to their psychology. But monasticism as a whole ceased to be a danger
and became a source of power and inspiration for the Church. Ultimately,
monasticism became a constructive force in society: it united men in a
new form of communal life and gave them a considerable amount of
economic independence and political self-government. When Cassiodorus
added specific cultural activites to the ordinary life of his monks, a new
chapter opened in the intellectual history of Europe. [1] The monks were
not helping the Empire to survive. Judged from the traditional point of
view of the pagan society they were a subversive force. But they
provided an alternative to pagan city life.

Monasticism is the most obvious example of the way in which Christianity
built something of its own which undermined the military and political
structure of the Roman empire. Yet this is only part of the story.

As soon as the barbarians were let into the empire, the conflict between
pagan society and Christian society changed its aspect. A new factor
was introduced. It remained to be seen whether pagans or Christians
would succeed better in dealing wth the barbarians. From the end of the
fourth century A.D, the Christian Church was asked not only to exorcise
the devils, but to tame the barbarians. Next to Satan, the barbarians
could be found everywhere, but unlike the devils no simple formula could
chase them away.

Here the Church had to operate with subtlety in a variety of situations:
it had to prove itself superior to the pagans.

It was soon evident that the East was safer than the West. The main
German pressure was on the Rhine and on the Danube. Asia was fairly
secure. The military reserviour of Asia Minor provided enough soldiers
for the emperors of Constantinople to counerbalance the influence
of the German mercenaries and to help to keep them in their place.
Constantinople itself proved to be an impregnable fortress. But the
military aspects of the situation cannot be separated from the social ones.

The East was safer not only because it was stronger, but also because
it was less dissatisfied with the Roman administration. The concentration
of wealth in a few hands did not go quite as far as in the West. City life
survived better in the East, and consequently the peasants there were
less hard pressed. If we except Egypt, the East has no parallel to the
endemic revolts of the Bagaudae and the circumcelliones of Gaul, Spain,
and Africa.

In the West there were people wondering whether their lot would not
be better under the barbarians. St. Augustine himself is not invariably
certain that the empire was a good thing. His disciple Orosius has a
telling passage about people who would have preferred to live among
barbarians. The French priest Salvianus, the author of the De
gubernatione dei, written about 450, was deeply impressed by the
quality of the Germans; and there is the famous story of a Roman who
lived among the Huns and explained why he was better off with them.
[Priscus]

This evidence does not of course mean that the barbarians were
greeted as liberators in any part of the empire. The slaves and the
derfs were not freed by the barbarians. They simply changed masters
and had to bear the consequences of all the destructions and
revolutions. It is true that the curiales were progressively
releived of their burdens and that the corporate system of the late
Roman empire fell into desuetude. But the disappeared
only because city life disappeared. The picture of the barbarians
arriving as a liberation army is a fantastic traversty of the facts.
What must be taken into account, however, is that in the West the
psychological resistance to the barbarians was less strong than in
the East. Not only military weakness, but defeatism paved the way
for the German invasion of Italy and the western provinces.

We badly neeed systematic research on regional differences in the
attitude of the Church towards the Roman state. Generalizations
are premature. But some facts are apparent. The Greek Fathers
never produced searching criticisms of the Roman State comparable
with those of St. Augustine and Salvian. On the contrary, St. John
Chrysostom supported the anti-German party in Constantinople,
and Synesius became a convert and a bishop after having outlined
the programme of that party.

It would seem that in the West, after having contributed to the
weakening of the empire, the Chuch inclined to accept collaboration
with the barbarians and even replacement of the Roman authorities
by barbarian leaders. In the East (with the partial exception of
Alexandria) the Church appreciated the military strength of the Roman
state and the loyalties it commanded.

No doubt the Eastern churches, too, did not hesitate to deprive
the Roman administration of the best men and of the best revenues
whenever they could, but, at least from the second part of the fourth
century, they threw in their weight with the new Rome.

Looking at both sides of the empire, one conclusion seems
inescapable. The Church managed to have it both ways. It could
help the ordinary man either in his fight against the barbarians or in his
compromise with them. It succeeded where pagan society had little
to offer either way. The educated pagan was by definition afraid of
barbarians. There was no bridge between the aristocratic ideals of
a pagan and the primitive violence of a German invader.

In theory the barbarians could be idealized. Primitivism has always
had its devotees. Alternatively, a few select barbarians could be
redeemed by proper education and philosophic training. There was
no objection to barbarians on racial grounds. But the ordinary barbarian
as such was nothing more than a nightmare to the educated pagan.

The Christians had a different attitude and other possibilities. They
could convert the barbarians and make them members of the Church.
They had discovered a bridge between barbarism and civilization.
Alternatively, the Church could give its moral support to the struggle
against the barbarians: the defence of the empire could be presented
as the defence of the Church.

It is obvious that if we had to analyse the process in detail we
should have to take into account the complications caused by the
existence of doctrinal differences with the Church. It was commonly
felt that an heretic was worse than a pagan. Thus the fight against
German Arians was even more meritorious than the fight against
German pagans.

What really matters to us is that in the West the Church gradually
replaced the dying State in dealing with the barbarians. In the East,
on the other hand, the Church realized that the Roman state was
much more vital and supported it in its fight against the barbarians.
In the West, after having weakened the Roman state, the Church
accepted its demise and acted independently in taking them. In the
East, the Church almost identified itself with the Roman State of
Constantinople.

In both cases, ordinary people needed protection and guidance.
The wealthy classes were capable of looking after themselves
either under the Roman emperor or under the barbarian kings.
But ordinary people wanted leaders. They found them in their bishops.

Above all, something had to be done in order to establish a communal
life which both Romans and barbarians could share. A glance at the life
of St. Severinus by Eugippius is enough to give an impression of what
a courageous and imaginative Christian leader could do in difficult
circumstances.

In the fourth and fifth centuries the bishops did not make much
of an effort to convert the barbarians who were living outside the
borders of the Roman empire. But they were deeply concerned with
the religion of those barbarians who settled in the empire. In other
words, the conversion to Christianity was part of the process whereby
the Germans were, at least to a certain extent, romanized and made
capable of living together with the citizens of the Roman empire.

The process of romanizing the barbarians by christianizing them
is an essential feature of the history of the Roman empire between
Constantine and Justinian. If it did not save the empire, at least in
the West, it saved many features of Roman civilization.

The superiority of Christianity over paganism in dynamism and
efficiency was already evident in the fourth century. The Christians
could adapt themselves better to the new political and social situation
and deal more efficiently with the barbarians. A closer analysis of the
relations between pagans and Christians in the fourth century is
therefore the necessary presupposition for any further study of the
decline of the Roman empire.

Such analysis may show that in this field as well as in other fields
the solitary Jacob Burckhardt was nearer the truth than any other
historian of the nineteenth century. His book on Constantine (1852)
was inspired by Gibbon and merciless in its judgement of the emperor
who christianized the empire, but was very careful to avoid any
confusion between Constantine and the cause he embraced.
Burckhardt tried to understand what the Church had to give to a
declining empire and under what conditions it was prepared to do so.
We are still wrestling with the same problem. [1]